Returning

We’ve been home five days and I can’t bring myself to write my thoughts about returning from our long journey. Mainly, it’s because I’m not sure what they are. In many ways we’re just picking up right where we left off: school started on Monday; we froze outside watching a girls’ softball game that same evening; Sophia re-joined her tiny ballerinas’ class at the Y on Tuesday, and now I drive a mini-van.

In other ways it’s like we’ve descended from another planet. I went to Costco on my first day back (am I crazy?!) where acquaintances I ran into were talking about how tired they were from the grueling trip back from Orlando or Hilton Head for Spring Break and I couldn’t bring myself to say “well, if you think that’s bad, I just returned from Africa…for 3 months…alone with my children…”

Things seem sort of same-old, same-old – until any of us open our mouths to talk. Like when Sophia rolls her “L’s” with a slight Gambian accent and casually mentions how there is no electricity in her schoollll in Africa -- “but we don’t need it, because there’s lots of sunshine” – or when Anisa clarifies points about everyday life to baffled classmates who can’t believe she lived in Africa and she’s actually home in one piece.

I can see the new perspective in the kids – mostly in unexpected places. On last night’s American Idol they gave a preview of their “Idol Gives Back” show, with Simon in Africa. Layla and Anisa perked up to see this, and then reacted: 1) why do they just say Simon and Ryan went to Africa, and not the actual country they were in? and 2) the school uniforms the needy girls were wearing actually looked pretty nice and new, not like what we had seen at the public school; so the “neediness” seems very relative.

I’m going to try to process the transition back and then write more for this blog. For now, it’s all too fresh to know what to make of the return home. But I know this: as wonderful as the trip was, it is nice to be back home.